Doctors prescribing new migraine breakthrough

Those suffering from migraines are already aware of how disabling they can be.The Federal Drug Administration ...

Posted: Jul 3, 2018 4:55 PM

Updated: Jul 3, 2018 4:55 PM

Posted By: CNN Wire

Those suffering from migraines are already aware of how disabling they can be.

The Federal Drug Administration recently approved the drug Aimovig and doctors at the University of Kansas Health System are already prescribing the medication to patients.

Aimovig has only been available for a couple of weeks and doctors are calling it a "big breakthrough".

The first-of-its-kind drug is meant specifically for migraines and is given alongside other medications to maximize its effectiveness.

"There's no one drug that's going to take them all away. But, if we can get a little bit of reduction with multiple different techniques, that's going to be a way to reduce them long term," neurologist Deetra Ford said.

The new option specifically targets a protein in the body researchers say appears to be involved in migraine attacks.

Ford says it won't eliminate migraines completely but will shorten their duration.

"In the acute migraine trials, they were able to reduce in people who were having them on an average of eight to nine migraines per month. They were able to go down by about 2.5 to three days. And in the chronic migraine group where they were having 18 to 19 migraine days per month, they were able to reduce those by anywhere from five to six days," Ford said.

The new treatment is a once a month self-injection that doesn't go far beneath the skin and doctors say it is not terribly painful.

"Migraines can be really debilitating. People miss a lot of work. They miss activities of daily living. They miss their kids' ball games," Ford said. So to have something…this revolutionary that we can actually try to help with some of those reductions in days is wonderful."

According to the Migraine Research Foundation, more than 38 million Americans suffer from migraines.